(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a service providing system in which various services (e.g., sale of commodities and pay distribution of digital content including music and video) are provided from a provider to a user via a network such as the Internet. In particular, the present invention relates to a service providing system where the security of a user' personal information is protected with high reliability in providing services to the user. The present invention also relates to a service providing method realizing the same.
(2) Description of Related Art
With the recent widespread use of the Internet in ordinary households, there has been a significant growth in the business of providing various pay services (e.g., sale of commodities and distribution of digital content such as music and video) via a network. For receiving such services, service users are required to send their personal information that is necessary for the delivery, payment, etc. of the commodity to service providers. Typical examples of such personal information include a name, address, telephone number, and credit card number. Service providers verify personal information sent from users for user authentication purposes, and provide services only to users whose personal information is proven to be authentic.
However, it is inconvenient for such a user who repeatedly uses services of the same service provider to send his or her personal information every time that the user intends to receive services from the service provider. It is also burdensome for the service provider side to verify personal information sent from a large number of users every time that the service provider provides services to them.
In view of this, service providing systems that can improve the convenience of service users and alleviate burdens on service providers are desired.
The following is one example of the basic forms of such systems. In the system, a service user is required to send his or her personal information to a service provider only when using the service provider for the first time. The personal information is verified and registered by the service provider. To be more specific, the service provider enters, in its database, the verified personal information together with a user ID and password set by the service user. Once the personal information is registered, the service user is simply required to send the registered user ID and password to the service provider when intending to receive services. The service provider authenticates the service user with the use of the password, and obtains the service user's personal information based on the user ID, out of plural sets of personal information that have been registered. In this system, each service user is not required to send his or her personal information every time that the user intends to receive services. Also, the service provider is required to verify each user's personal information once.
In the above system, however, a service user who uses a plurality of service providers needs to register a different user ID and a different password with each service provider, and to memorize the registered user IDs and passwords. In this case, the service user is likely to suffer from complicated management of the user IDs and passwords. Further, even with the need to verify each user's personal information only once, the service provider side may still suffer from a heavy processing load if the number of service users is large.
In view of such disadvantages, service providing systems that include a management center dedicated to verification of personal information and management of verified personal information have been developed. A typical example of such is a system employing .NET Passport (described in “Microsoft .NET Passport Technical Overview (September 2001)”).
In the system employing .NET Passport, a service user registers in advance his or her personal information with a management center, together with a user ID and password. For registration of personal information, the management center performs the same verification process as performed by the service provider in the above system. To receive services from the service provider, the service user, who has once registered his or her personal information, sends the user ID and password to the management center, so as to obtain the registered personal information. Then, the service user sends the obtained personal information to the service provider. It should be noted here that the management center holds a private cryptograph key which is unique to each service provider, and each service provider shares the corresponding unique private cryptograph key. The management center encrypts the personal information by using the key shared by the service provider, and transmits the encrypted personal information to the service user. The service user receives the encrypted personal information from the management center, and transmits the encrypted personal information to the service provider. The service provider receives the encrypted personal information from the service user, and decrypts the encrypted personal information by using the shared key.
In this system, the service user is simply required to register one user ID and one password with the management center. Also, the service provider is freed from the heavy processing load of verifying personal information.
However, the service providing system including the management center has the following problem.
The management center manages personal information for all service users who have used any service provider within the system. This means that personal information for a large number of service users is concentrated at the management center. The management center storing personal information for a large number of service users can often be targeted by hackers who attempt an unauthorized access to the personal information. If the database of personal information is subjected to such an unauthorized access, a massive amount of personal information could leak out. This possibility may cause service users to feel uncertain about the security of the system, and to hesitate to receive services via a network. Such lack of user confidence in the system security may hinder the widespread use and advancement of the business of providing services via a network.
Further, in the above system, the service users are required to access the management center every time that they intend to receive services. This increases the processing load on the management center. If a large number of service users access the management center at the same time, the management center may fail or crash due to the heavy processing load exceeding its capacity.